


Smegged Man Walking

by The H Stands For Hologram (Disherona)



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Arnold Rimmer - Freeform, Being shut down, Gen, Hologrammatic Death, Last Thoughts, ME2, duplicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disherona/pseuds/The%20H%20Stands%20For%20Hologram
Summary: Arnold Rimmer's thoughts before being shut off in Me2.





	Smegged Man Walking

He couldn’t believe it. 

This had to be some sort of sick joke. Or Karma. Or Fate. 

After all, he had refused to give Lister Kochanski’s hologram disk. He had refused to let Lister spend an evening with Kristine Kochanski. But not because he didn’t want him to have a single evening with her, but because he knew, better than he knew anything else, that if Lister had gotten to spend an evening with Kochanski’s hologrammatic image, he would never be switched on again. And Arnold Judas Rimmer would not let that happen. 

So he switched Kochanski’s disk with his own. “What a bright boy!” he thought to himself. Who better to spend time with, out of the whole crew, then himself? But he soon became aware of how much he hated his own self. Everything about himself was a-smeggin’-noying. He was a smeghead. A bonehead. An “Ace-hole”. Lister had been right, and it didn’t take long to realize this.

But Fate, or his own stupidity, would have it that no other way. He was annoying. Two hims was doubly so. And it was driving Lister mad, but not in a "keeping him sane" way, and Lister decided that one of them needed to go. 

There was no regard for the past, no regard for whatever friendship had been built. Nothing. Lister would choose for one of them to be shut down in the most arbitrary, nonsensical ways possible. By Ippy-Dippy. A stupid, smegging child’s game. 

He had asked Holly if Lister would be allowed to switch him off. “Aren’t I integral to the new mission?”, he whined to Holly. “Aren’t I the only one, the one chosen from out of a crew of 168 members, who could keep Lister sane.” 

“Of course,” Holly said in his monotone voice, “and your duplicate will also be able to do that. Probably better than you.” 

“Smeg!” Rimmer blurted out. Of course, his duplicate could do it better. This was his duplicate him before he had died. Even A.J. Rimmer, as clueless as he was about most things, knew that he himself had changed since being revived as a hologram. The other him, the better him, would do a better job at keeping Lister sane because he was his old self. His duplicate would drive him madder. Give Old Listy a reason to get out of bed in the afternoon. To torment this new, fresh Rimmer who hadn’t had the pleasure of Lister going through his things. Hadn’t heard the new “dead themed” insults. 

Smeg, there was a possibility that Lister could revive a fresh Rimmer every year or so and start all over again. The smegging smegger. 

“Holly,” he stated, to the now empty the room he had shared with his duplicate, as skutters moved his belongings back to the old bunk room he had shared with Lister. Things would be the same for good old David Lister. Perhaps better. Knowing himself as he did, he was sure his duplicate would give him that night with Kochanski. This new Rimmer would learn from the originals mistakes. 

“Give me a clean uniform.” He called out to Holly.

“Yes, Arnold.” Holly said, as he quickly complied. Rimmer was in his regulation tan uniform. Pressed. Tie straight. For all the good that would do. He checked his hologrammatic image in the mirror, touching the “H” on his head, under the guise of making sure it was straight but in reality to confirm the fact that he was still a computer simulation of himself. A hologram. A dead man. 

He sighed as he regarded his image for the last time, before being erased forever. Ippy-Dippyied to death. 

“Holly, would you please let me die in that Admirals uniform? Consider it…a last request.” 

Holly complied, without question. 

“Thanks, Hol.” 

One last look at that “H” and himself in a uniform he had always dreamed that he would be dressed in one day. Dead man walking, he thought as he strode purposefully to the drive room to meet his fate. Correction. Smegged man walking.


End file.
